Gertjan Zwiggelaar

Gertjan was born in Amsterdam, the Netherlands in the afternoon of December 26, 1950; right smack in the middle of the 20th century. When he was 3, the family moved to Maastricht; known to the ancient Romans as, TRAJECTUM AD MOSSUM; the furthest north they built a fortified camp on mainland Europe. The city was well over a thousand years old; as was Amsterdam, of course.

In June, 1960 Gertjan was uprooted and emigrated to Edmonton, Alberta, a city that was only 60 years old at the time. It was the real 'frontier' as he was told it was by his friends and family back in the old country. The tallest building was only nine stories and men and women had to enter a public house through seperate entrances. It was all so strange to the young boy. What was even stranger was the barbaric practice of strapping students on the hands in public school. Every year, from grade 3 to 9 inclusive, some Diabolical principal or frustrated teacher strapped this writer on his hands! Fortunately this practice is on the wane in Canada.

In 1966 Gertjan and his family moved to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, where he began his first stint in high school at Mount Royal Collegiate. In grade nine and ten, he was prevented from attending unless he got his 'long' hair cut. Of course, being a concientious student, he submitted to that humiliation. Gertjan had no choice. The martinet and his minion, who ran the school like a military camp, controlled the key to the door of his education. Fortunately he moved again in 1968, this time to Regina, where he finished grades 11 and 12 at a much more humane school, Thom Collegiate. It was in this school where he flourished.

Gertjan became heavily involved with all manner of extra curricular activities; art club, drama club, students' council, and yearbook. During that same year, he was one of 20 high school students selected from 350, to participate in the Saskatchewan Youth Theatre Project. He also became a host of a weekly television show, The Age of Aquarius, on CKCK. At the end of the year Gertjan had won a travel scholarship to Nova Scotia.

In grade 12 Gertjan became students' council president, won both silver and gold participation awards, a students' union scholarship and the B.F.A. Entrance Scholarship to the University of Regina, where he began classes in September, 1970. Gertjan took a break from his studies from 1972 to 73 in order to travel in Western Europe and North Western Africa. He returned to his studies in the fall of 1973 and completed a Bachelor of Arts with distinction and great distinction in Visual Arts; his major field of study.

Gertjan's first wife, Yvette and their little daughter, Tara Danielle, became a family in 1974 and by June, 1975 they set off on an 11 month road tour which took them from: Saskatoon, to Cross Lake, Manitoba, to Vancouver, down the entire west coast of North America to the border of El Salvador and back; up the east coast of Mexico and the Central United States, finally settling in Edmonton, where Gertjan worked three jobs, as well as returning to university in order to obtain a teaching degree in Secondary Art Education. He began teaching Junior and Senior High Art and Drama in Viking, Alberta in 1978. It was during this period that he began to write plays, poems, and short stories. He completed the B.Ed. degree with distinction at the University of Alberta in 1982; the year Gertjan and Yvette separated. By this time their second daughter, Carey Annbrie was nearing 4 years old. They all moved to Saskatoon, where Gertjan spent lots of time with the girls, as well as painting pictures and writing lots of poetry. During his time in Saskatoon, Gertjan curated a marvelous art exhibition called, On Being Human, at the Francis Morrison Gallery. Eight artists, including him, showed their work.

While in Saskatoon, Gertjan became involved with health food sales and began to do very well in that business; quickly rising up the ranks and making decent money. However, things happened and he continued the business part time while returning to another stint of teaching. This time it was a year spent in a hamlet of 400 souls; Edgerton, Alberta. His assignments included; grades 3 - 10 art, grade 7 English, and grade 9 Social Studies. During that year spent in that small prairie town, Gertjan painted quite a number of pictures, but did not do much writing.

By the following spring, the artist began making more money doing his sales business part time, than he was earning as a teacher full time. Since his contract was not extended, he went full time into sales for another two years until 1988, when Gertjan joined the staff of Lindsay Thurber Comprehensive High School in Red Deer, Alberta. His first task was to rebuild a flagging drama program. By the end of the first semester the program was so popular, another teacher and more drama space had to be found. Every year, when Gertjan taught drama there, they hosted a Theatre Sports Festival. Gertjan also sent out Theatre Sports Teams which were very successful; always winning gold, if not silver and bronze, as well, in every competition, including the Alberta Winter Games in Fort MacMurray, from whence they returned with gold. His Drama students averaged 18 shows per year! Many of the shows were written by his students. The grade 10s performed for invited elementary classes and the other grades performed for their parents and peers. Most of the shows were performed during school time; always timed to fill an 80 minute class. Standing room only crowds was the norm.

In 1991 Gertjan met his second wife, Karen. She and Gertjan have a wonderful son together. His name is Michael. He is also a red head, like his mom, and how his dad used to be.

The artist quit teaching the drama program and took over a flagging art department; quickly rebuilding it so that by the end of the first semester, an other teacher and more space had to be found to accomodate increased enrollments. By 1995 Gertjan incorporated computers into the art program which led to the development of Visual Communications Technology, now a province wide field of study. He was one of the first teachers to implement computer assisted graphic design in an Alberta high school. Gertjan taught the program for two and a half years.

In 2001 Gertjan quit teaching, he and Karen broke up, and Gertjan developed fibro myalgia, which knocked him to the ground with a lot of pain and suffering. This terrible afliction lasted for nearly six months, until Karen helped find a cure with a powerful combination of herbs. Had he stayed on the pharmaceuticals the doctor had prescribed, he would likely be dead today. (Prednisone and Vioxx. The former can make you blind, and the latter can make you dead). The moment Gertjan was feeling better, he went into his studio and drew a small landscape on a piece of water colour sample paper. After finishing the piece with some colour washes, he felt so good about that he began a painting frenzy that lasted ten days, during which the artist produced 50 water colours; anywhere from 2 x 3 inches to 10 x 36 inches and everything in between.

In the fall of 2001, just before the infamous 9/11 event, Gertjan headed for Mexico with his 29 ft. holiday trailer. Alas, 'the event' stopped him from going further south than Kerremeos, British Columbia, where he wintered and finished writing a 766 page fantasy novel, The Incredible Adventures of Princess Keira and her Friends. In the spring Gertjan moved to Kelowna and began to paint 2 x 4 foot panels depicting lost cities. This series now numbers around 25.

Gertjan returned to Alberta in 2004 and spent another winter in his trailer on a friend's farm, west of Red Deer. Here he penned, Worm Tales, a collection of 24 short stories about anthropomorphic earth worms in Abigail and Larry Smith's garden in Edmonton. After moving into an apartment in Red Deer, the artist painted a large number of canvases of fantasy images and landscapes, as well as writing the first and second drafts of, A Pirate's Tale. That book has gone through 12 separate readings before it was published on July 18, 2008.

In 2006 Gertjan became an energy consultant for almost a year. By December he was selling cars; something he carried on until October 17th, 2007, when he was summarily dismissed because he had the temerity to complain about something. He has remained very productive having penned several more books: A Journey to the Underside, Islands of the Chimera, An Other Pirate's Tale, and is nearly finished writing, In the Game; his 7th novel. A third pirate novel is waiting in the wings. The title will be, Hansel Sventska. You can read more about these other books here.